The estimated prevalence of non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) worldwide is approximately 25%. However, the real prevalence of NAFLD and the associated disorders is unknown mainly because reliable and applicable diagnostic tests are lacking. This is further complicated by the lack of consensus on the terminology of different entities such as NAFLD or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Although assessing fatty infiltration in the liver is simple by ultrasound, the gold standard for the assessment of fibrosis, the only marker of progression towards more severe liver disease is still liver biopsy. Although other non‐invasive tests have been proposed, they must still be validated in large series. Because NAFL/NAFLD/NASH and related metabolic diseases represent an economic burden, finding an inexpensive method to diagnose and stage fatty liver is a priority. A translational approach with the use of cell and/or animal models could help to reach this goal.
In the past decades patients with hemophilia were infected commonly by hepatitis C virus (HCV) and a significant number of patients are infected chronically. Focusing on the role of the immune system for controlling and or maintaining HCV infection, the leukocyte and cytokine profiles of peripheral blood from hemophilia A patients and other patients with and without HCV infection were studied. The results demonstrated that hemophilia A is characterized by a general state of circulating leukocytes activation along with an overall increase in the frequency of IL-6 and IL-10 with decrease of IL-8 and IL-12. HCV infection of patients with hemophilia A does not influence further the activation state of circulating leukocytes but is accompanied by lower levels of alanine transaminase (ALT) and a prominent anti-inflammatory/regulatory serum cytokine pattern, mediated by IL-4 and IL-10. Additionally, the results demonstrated that hemophilia A patients infected with HCV displaying No/Low antibody response to C33c and C22 have significant lower viral load and higher serum levels of IL-12 and IL-4. This finding suggests that the differential RIBA reactivity to C33c/C22 HCV core proteins may have a putative value as a prognostic biomarker for the infection in hemophilia A patients.
The genotype of 69 HCV positive patients was determined. An in-house standardized nested-PCR was used to detect HCV RNA. Genotype assignment was based on type-specific motifs on the sequenced amplicons delimited by primers HC11/HC18 from the 5' untranslated region. Results: Of the 69 patients studied, 65.2% were male and 34.8% were female. Genotype 1 showed the greatest prevalence, followed by 3 and 2. Conclusions: These data suggesting that Manaus is the point of arrival of HCV in the State of Amazonas.
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